Cigarette Smoking Is Growing Hazardous To Careers In Business
Every morning, as soon as he gets to work, a Johnson & Johnson manager makes a beeline for the bathroom. He gargles with mouthwash and downs mints. Then, to mask any lingering odor, he douses his face and hands with skin cream.
But he still worries that he will be reprimanded or passed over for a promotion if his boss ever learns that his closet vice is cigarette smoking.
"I've become almost like a junkie, sneaking around as if I take illegal drugs," says the manager, who works at Johnson & Johnson headquarters in New Brunswick, N.J. "In a {corporate} culture like ours, where everyone is looking good and smelling good, the last thing you do is stick a cigarette in your mouth."
In corporate America, cigarette smoking is becoming hazardous to careers. Increasingly, smokers express anxiety that their prospects for getting hired and promoted are being stunted by their habit. Many of them fear they face both covert and overt discrimination in the workplace.
Until now, few companies have explicitly refused to hire smokers or have fired them outright for lighting up on the job. But evidence indicates that the undercurrent of employer prejudice against smokers is growing stronger. Smokers feel especially vulnerable at companies where smoking restrictions are already in force or where top executives don't smoke. They worry that, at the very least, it will be harder for them to climb the career ladder than for nonsmokers.
Barbara Hackman Franklin, a corporate director on several boards including those of Westinghouse Electric Corp., Dow Chemical Co., Black & Decker Corp. and Aetna Life & Casualty Co., says many companies have adopted an unwritten rule: "If you want to advance, don't smoke."
Indeed, in the past five years, smoking has gone from being a socially acceptable practice to one that is increasingly seen as a character defect indicating weakness and lack of self-discipline. "The cocaine abuser, the drunk at a party -- and the person who smokes next door -- are all viewed with the same generalized distaste," contends Robert Rosner, the executive director of the Smoking Policy Institute, which helps companies establish smoking restrictions.
Given such attitudes, many smokers are trying, with various degrees of success, to kick the habit. Among those in corporate America who continue to puff, many say they no longer feel like one of the guys. William L. Newkirk, the vice president of public relations at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., quit smoking briefly to please his chairman, who led a nonsmoking crusade. Now back to his several-pack-a-day habit, Mr. Newkirk acknowledges that he feels "more and more like a pariah."
Some bosses make no secret of their bias. Recently, Ralston Purina Co.'s chairman, William Stiritz, delivered a tongue-lashing to some cigar-smoking senior executives about their "nasty" habit and lack of respect for others. The managers have since reformed their ways -- at least at work -- but word of Mr. Stiritz's displeasure traveled quickly throughout the company.
"Given the attitude of the top echelon at Ralston Purina, smoking is an impediment to climbing the corporate ladder," says W. Edwin Magee, the corporate medical director, who has tried to help some fast-track managers quit. "A number of young executives trying to climb have come to me and said, 'When you know your boss doesn't smoke and doesn't like it, it's a strong reason not to.'"
Smokers are feeling the heat because companies are taking a harder line on such issues as productivity, rising medical costs and the effects of passive smoke. Although there are conflicting claims about whether smokers cost employers more in terms of higher insurance rates and absenteeism, companies often cite such concerns to justify restrictive smoking policies. In addition, new state and local ordinances and employee complaints put significant pressure on many companies.
Last year, a survey of 660 companies by the Bureau of National Affairs Inc., a Washington-based research group, found that 36% of employers had adopted restrictive policies on smoking and an additional 22% were studying them.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted between April 12 and April 14 shows that tolerance for smoking is evaporating. Two-thirds of the 1,011 nonsmokers polled said they are more likely to think of their rights as nonsmokers than five years ago. More than half of the nonsmokers said cigarette smoke in the workplace bothers them.
Of the 462 smokers polled, 40% said they get more complaints about their smoking from fellow workers than they got five years ago. And two-thirds of the entire employee sampling said they approve of laws that restrict smoking in the workplace and other public places.
But not all smokers are under fire. In certain industries, certain parts of the country or certain companies where the top brass smoke, the habit is apt to be condoned, even encouraged. Signs at the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., proclaim, "Thank you for smoking." Brown-Forman Inc., the nation's largest distiller, terms smoking a "non-issue." Says Russell C. Buzby, the company's executive director of human resources: "It's just good manners in corporate life to have as few rules as possible."
Even at companies where smoking is restricted, most executives maintain in public that cigarettes aren't a factor in evaluating potential or current employees. "We're promoting people for their ability to think, for their ability to make judgments and decisions," says John W. Teets, the chief executive officer of Greyhound Corp., which instituted a companywide smoking ban last year. "Smoking isn't a detriment to being promoted."
Where it does exist, discrimination against smokers is hard to prove. Often, it is the result of an individual manager's bias -- typically subconscious -- rather than an explicit corporate policy. Either way, few people want to talk about it.
"Two of my corporate clients have told me in great confidence that they have been discriminating against smokers," says John Fox, an employment and labor lawyer based in Washington, D.C. "But they are afraid to discuss it openly because no one knows what the law is, and there is a great liability attached to wrongful discharge."
Mr. Fox says one client reduced its work force by selecting smokers to dismiss, while the other refused to promote and transfer smokers to one of its units. In neither case were the smokers informed that they were being penalized because of their habit.
Another reason for the secrecy is that discrimination against smokers also carries with it the implication of race and sex discrimination. Unpublished research collected in 1985 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that 40.7% of black males over age 20 smoke, while only 32.3% of such white males do. According to the same data, 27.7% of all white females smoke, compared with 32% of all black females. In the 20- to 24-year-old age category, 33.1% of white women smoke -- a figure that is significantly above that of black or white males or black females in the same age group.
Thus, the tobacco industry, particularly Philip Morris Cos., and some civil-rights organizations argue that cigarettes could be used as a weapon against blacks and young women, since those groups are more apt to smoke than white males. "Any kind of smoking restrictions could have a disproportionate impact on women and blacks," contends Robert W. Ethridge, assistant vice president for equal opportunity at Emory University.
Mr. Ethridge, who also is the president of the American Association of Affirmative Action, a group of 1,300 affirmative-action officers, argues that segregated office assignments could create a "back of the bus" mentality. Such practices risk cutting off blacks and women from their supervisors and undermining their chances for increased compensation and promotion, he says. But because the restrictions are new, he adds, "We may not see the true impact until a couple of years from now."
As the on-the-job restrictions and penalties have mounted, concerned smokers like the Johnson & Johnson closet-puffing manager have increasingly taken to hiding their habits. Some other examples:
-- Clest Lanier, a 39-year-old personnel assistant for the Farm Credit Banks of Louisville, Ky., typically smokes only at lunchtime, when her office is empty, or in the bathroom. As a black and a woman, she contends she already has two strikes against her. "Cigarettes could be the third strike," she says.
-- Not long ago, a chain-smoking advertising copywriter spent several hours in a no-smoking conference room at Campbell Soup Co. in Camden, N.J., and surreptitiously lit a cigarette. When someone walked in the door, he tried to make his smoke disappear by crouching down and exhaling into a desk drawer.
-- Until last year when a smoking ban went into effect at Rainier Bancorporation in Seattle, C. Bruce Emry, vice president of communications, used to go through 2 1/2 packs of cigarettes a day. But he never smoked in his superiors' offices. "There was a feeling in the back of my mind that it might count against me," he explains.
-- I.T. "Tex" Corley, vice president for finance at Mesa Limited Partnership in Dallas, quit two months ago. Before then, he says, he would smoke in front of his boss, a former smoker, in "real social" situations. But he drew the line when it came to work or travel. In meetings with his superior, Mr. Corley wouldn't dream of saying he needed a cigarette break. His excuse for absenting himself: "I have to make a phone call."
Smokers' various subterfuges, in many cases, are necessitated by very real threats. At a company's board meeting several months ago, Ms. Hackman Franklin, the corporate director, says talk turned to candidates in line for some top executive jobs. An upper-level manager was hailed as a "real star of his generation." But then, Ms. Hackman Franklin recalls, a director interrupted with, "Wait a minute. He's a little overweight, and he's a smoker. He's always got a cigarette in his mouth." Others chimed in, she says, raising questions about "his longevity and his ability to stay the course." The enthusiastic discussion of the up-and-comer petered out.
Rodger C. Taylor, a product manager at Fellowes Manufacturing Co. of Itasca, Ill., freely admits he wouldn't hire a smoker even though his company has no such official policy. Although he has yet to reject a smoker, he says, "I look upon smokers as being weak and not being at the same level of intelligence as I am. At some point, their progression up the career ladder will be stopped because, to me, they're slobs."
Similarly, Provident Indemnity Life Insurance Co.'s president, James Hellauer, recently interviewed a job candidate who was also a friend -- and a heavy smoker. But Mr. Hellauer, who has banned smoking at his Norristown, Pa., company, says he didn't give his buddy the job, in part because of his negative feelings about "nicotine fingers" and "reeking" clothes.
Another big problem for career-conscious smokers is that it is getting harder for them to look like team players. Over a year ago, the Johnson & Johnson manager attended a meeting where one nonsmoking executive devastated a cigarette-smoking rival by complaining vociferously when he pulled out his matches. "He {the nonsmoker} managed to make him {the smoker} look like a jerk without ever having to attack his work," the manager recalls.
At some companies, the nonconformity of smokers is made all the more obvious because they can puff only in segregated areas. For example, at Fellowes Manufacturing, employees have to light up outside at a loading dock, amid the stench of diesel fumes. Says Gina Canale, a purchasing assistant at the company: "We feel degraded, isolated and like outcasts."
In extreme cases, smokers can get fired. In January, Chicago-based USG Corp. said it would no longer hire smokers at nine mineral-fiber manufacturing plants and told its 1,300 employees at those plants that they must stop smoking or lose their jobs. In an attempt to minimize health threats and to reduce worker-compensation costs, USG's ban will apply to both work and home. The company will conduct periodic lung tests to monitor any changes in the employees' health status. (Thus far, USG has banned smoking in the workplace, but it hasn't yet introduced the nosmoking-at-home phase.)
Last December, Edelburg Trenkler, a catering supervisor at the Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colo., lost her job. In her termination letter, hospital officials cited the employee's unsatisfactory performance, missed meetings and "rude" behavior.
But Ms. Trenkler's bosses also disclosed to her another reason for her discharge: On National Smokeout Day, she was discovered in a smoke-free dining room puffing on a cigarette, a gesture her bosses now say symbolized her "defiant attitude." Explains Sister Ruth Ann Panning, a Penrose official: "Smoking was mentioned because it reflected an attitude of 'I'll do what I please.'" (Ms. Trenkler says she now intends to file a wrongful-discharge suit.)
Indeed, a lot of smokers complain that the very smoking restrictions intended to make them healthier and more productive actually work to their disadvantage. While some manage to quit or drastically curtail their habit, others admit that when they are supposed to be making critical decisions, they are really worrying about when and where they can have their next cigarette. That anxiety, they say, undermines their ability to perform.
Now that she isn't allowed to smoke at her desk, Sharon Randolph, a manager in customer service at New York Telephone Co., says she is often tempted to slam down the phone on customers. "You're preoccupied with thinking, 'God, I hope this conversation {with a customer} ends,'" she says. "You'll do or say almost anything just to have a cigarette." Ms. Randolph feels such deprivation has turned her already stressful job into a pressure cooker. "By the time I hang up, I'm jumping out of my skin," she says. "That's probably more unhealthy than smoking."
But when smokers duck out for cigarette breaks, their productivity suffers. That can fuel the perception that smokers aren't as capable or as conscientious as their nonsmoking peers. Ms. Randolph is so anxious about maintaining her productivity that she now takes work home at night.
However they try to juggle the demands of their habit and their workload, some smokers fear that nonsmokers will run out of patience. Kathleen Landry, the manager of staffing at Greyhound, sees the day when her company's bosses, tolerant up to now, crack down on the trips that smokers make to the outdoor plaza. So with the help of jujubes, she is struggling to cut down to just two cigarettes per workday.
"There almost aren't words to describe how difficult it is," she confides. "But if we smokers continue to stand outside smoking, instead of sitting inside working, it obviously will hurt all our careers."
Others refuse to back down. David W. Brenton, an engineering assistant at a Motorola Inc. government-electronics facility in Chandler, Ariz., now faces the prospect of his career going up in smoke. Mainly in response to local ordinances, Motorola soon will prohibit employees from smoking in their work areas and private offices. And when that happens, Mr. Brenton plans to quit the company where he has worked for eight years -- rather than abandon his pack-and-a-half-a-day habit. He says he is bitter that Motorola has exceeded local requirements, allowing him, as he puts it, to be "victimized."
(Motorola won't discuss Mr. Brenton's case, but it says its purpose is to find "something fair and equitable" for all employees.)
"I feel ripped off," Mr. Brenton says. "I feel as though a lot of things I wanted to do here and worked my way up to do will have to go by the wayside."
By: Alix M.Freedman
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Some companies are enticing employees to lead healthier, more productive lives with a variety of "wellness" initiatives, including smoking-cessation counseling and products, weight maintenance plans, and exercise programs. Companies are promoting everything from a discount on smoking replacement aids and health club memberships to substantial discounts on health insurance premiums.
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